Shamans and Buddhists in Russia

From the Russia Today website

(Russia Today is an English-language TV news channel broadcasting globally via satellite and cable that presents the Russian point of view on events happening in Russia and around the world)

Spirituality runs deep in the remote Russian Republic of Tyva. While Shamanism is the unofficial religion there, Lamaism, or Tibetan Buddhism, is the official one.

But most people don’t have to choose between the two, since shamans and

lamas don’t have a grudge against each other.

Tyva is located in Southern Siberia, in one of the most isolated regions of Russia. Its people’s native religion is Shamanism — a belief in spirits inhabiting everything around them.

Going to a shaman is as common for Tyvans as going to a doctor. But nowadays Tyvan shamans don’t live in woods. They drive cars, live in normal houses and even pay taxes as private entrepreneurs.

Shamans are said to have special powers, and are connected to the invisible world of spirits. They act as mediums between this world and ordinary people, and have healing powers.

An offering to the spirits is an obligatory part of any ritual and is meant to please them. Anything can be an offering, from a head of a sheep up to a whole animal, depending on how much help you ask from the spirits.

A flat drum

called a dungur is essential for any Tyvan shaman. For him the instrument is a horse that gives him legs to travel to the spirits’ world during the ritual, and the faster the beat, the faster the horse runs.

Yet there is always another place where Tyvans normally go for spiritual aid — Buddhist temples. They say it’s a wise thing to do: “I always go to both lamas and shamans, because they both help. With the two powers there will be more luck,” explains Nadezhda, a visitor of a Buddhist temple in Kyzyl, the capital of Tyva.

There is no rivalry between the two religions in Tyva. Lamas sometimes advise people to go to shamans, and shamans may come to Buddhist temples to pray there. It’s no surprise. The fundamental values of both Shamanism and Buddhism depend on the principle of respect for nature, and they say it doesn’t matter who you go to as long as you live in harmony with the world and yourself.

Acupuncture Poetry?

I had an acupuncture appointment yesterday. My head felt about two sizes too small, and whenever I bent over and the blood rushed to my head, it was a most unpleasant experience.

Despite my weight, I rarely have high blood pressure, and when I do, I can generally feel it: a tic in my left eye when I’m under stress, or this shrunken head feeling. So I asked my brilliant acupuncture physician to see what she could do.

Jennie, bless her heart, stuck needles in my skull and forehead and my right ear. Most people don’t mind having their ears needled; I guess my ears are especially sensitive, because I tend to whine whenever she has to needle me there. Yesterday was no exception.

So she went looking for these self-adhesive magnets that she sometimes uses in my ears instead of needles (which have the added advantage of staying with you for several days), but the stickum wouldn’t stick. It is dreadfully humid down here right now, which may have had something to do with it. So we were stuck with the needles, as it were. The first needle was inserted into a ridge in my right ear. “That’s the hypertensive groove,” she explained.

Sounds like a song, I said.

Today she sent me this:

The Hypertensive Groove by Jeannette Westlake, AP, OMD My nerves are twanging like hot jazz guitars, My head is pounding like a drum. I’m as dizzy as Gillespie and I’m seeing stars My pressure’s up over 300 millibars Chorus: I need that hypertensive groove Something’s got to move Those little tacks might help me relax Acupuncture’s groovy, baby, to the max When my pulse has got a syncopated beat And I can barely struggle to my feet, When I’m light-headed, and my face is red, The cuff is pegging and I feel half-dead, Chorus: I need that hypertensive groove. . . .

Anyone care to set it to music?

By the way, everything is back to normal, blood pressure-wise. She’s a miracle worker.

Ronald Reagan on Shrub

From the recently published Reagan Diaries. The entry is dated May 17, 1986.

A moment I’ve been dreading. George brought his ne’er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I’ll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they’ll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work.